The number of the Beast - 666 is known to everyone, even a non-religious person. But few people think about where it came from and what significance it has. Where did the Beast or Satan get his number from?
All the peoples of the world attached great importance to numbers. Some of the numbers - three, seven, nine - were considered sacred and, accordingly, lucky; others (for example, the infamous "Devil's Dozen") - unhappy, associated with evil spirits. But, perhaps, the number 666 - "the number of the beast", was the most unlucky.
The first mention of the "number of the beast" is found in the "Revelation" of John the Theologian - perhaps the only prophecy officially recognized by the Christian Church. John describes in detail the appearance of a beast more powerful than all the demons of hell:
“And I stood on the sand of the sea, and saw a beast coming out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns: on his horns were ten diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names” (Apocalypse, ch. 13).
This animal will have the body of a leopard, bear claws and lion's fangs. He will rule the Earth for three and a half years, and before that the Antichrist will join him, who will force many to worship the beast.
Then the time of the great battle at Armageddon will come, the devil's power will be defeated, and Satan together with the Antichrist will be imprisoned for a thousand years, and the kingdom of Christ will be established on Earth …
The mysterious “number of the beast” in “Revelation” is said as if in passing: “Here is wisdom. He who has intelligence, count the number of the beast, for it is a human number; his number is six hundred and sixty-six. This short phrase has given rise to a myriad of interpretations.
The simplest thing that gave rise to the most panic can be called “calendar”. Whenever the ominous three sixes appeared on the calendar, especially impressionable people began to expect the appearance of the predicted beast. But neither in 666 nor in 1666 did anything like this happen.
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The latest wave swept the world on June 6, 2006. Expectant mothers were terrified of giving birth on this day (especially after watching the film "The Omen"), many believers locked themselves in their houses and prayed, and mystics furtively glanced at the sky.
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, was even forced to make an official statement to the press, in which he warned Christians against superstition:
“Unlike a pagan, who is afraid of everything, including eclipses, numbers and accepts, a Christian should not be afraid of anything or anyone but God … When the last times come, depends not on the coincidence of numbers, but on how much people will shy away from evil and fulfill the commandments of God."
The "calendar" decoding of the "number of the beast" can hardly be considered correct, because the text of the "Apocalypse" is deeply symbolic. In addition, it contains direct "clues", such as the words of one of the angels:
"The beast that you saw was, and it is not, and will come out of the abyss and go to destruction … And seven kings, of which five fell, one is, and the other has not yet come, and when it comes, it will not be long." …
So John the Theologian speaks of wisdom for a reason - most likely, it is a hint, a clue, accessible only to those who "have a mind."
Over the centuries, many attempts have been made to decipher the "number of the beast" - that is, to find out its name. One of the most widespread methods was kabbalistic. He relied on the fact that in the time of John the Evangelist, numbers were often replaced by letters of the alphabet.
Thus, the sum of the letters of the name of the beast should have amounted to 666. But there can be several such combinations, how can you choose the one that the prophet had in mind?
To decipher the "number of the beast" it is important to compare the words of "Revelation" with real historical events. The fact is that in the early Christian tradition Roman emperors were called "beasts".
Even Friedrich Engels, in his work "On the History of Primary Christianity", made an attempt to determine the time of writing the "Apocalypse" and made a count: the first "beast" was Augustus, the second was Tiberius, the third was Caligula, the fourth was Claudius, the fifth was Nero, the sixth was Galba, and the seventh is Otho. Othon ruled for only three months.
Engels made a completely logical conclusion: John the Theologian wrote the "Apocalypse" during the reign of Galba, that is, from June 9, 68 to January 15, 69 AD.
The German orientalist Ferdinand Benari once proposed the following hypothesis: the number 666 hides the name of the Roman emperor Nero - the very beast that “was and is not”. The fact is that on Roman coins that were minted for the eastern part of the Roman Empire, the inscriptions were made in Hebrew.
In this case, the vowels were omitted, and instead of "Nero Caesar" the inscription read "Nron Ksr". If we add up the numerical values of these letters, we get just 666. But why exactly Nero was declared “the beast”?
If we turn to historical documents, it becomes clear that the hatred of Christians towards Nero had many reasons. The ancient Roman writer-historian Guy Suetonius Tranquill left a biography of Nero. He was an extremely unbalanced, cruel and immoral person.
According to Suetonius, Nero executed Antonia, the daughter of Claudius, who after the death of Poppea refused to marry him, killed his mother and stepson. He forced his teacher Seneca to commit suicide, although more than once he swore not to harm him.
When a tailed comet appeared in the sky, he learned from the astrologer Balbill that it portends death to the supreme rulers.
Nero was seriously alarmed, but the astrologer told him that this disaster could be bought off with a brilliant execution. And the Roman emperor doomed to death all the noble men of the state - the pretext was the disclosure of two conspiracies at once.
If Nero treated all his subjects with incredible cruelty, then in relation to Christians he invented truly devilish bullying. Most of all, the emperor liked to watch how Christians were thrown into a cage with predatory animals, and they tore them apart.
Soon, during the conspiracy, Nero ordered one of his entourage to kill himself, the Christians sighed calmly. But not for long.
Servius Sulpicius Galba, who replaced Nero, turned out to be a weak ruler. He failed to restore order in the empire. In remote provinces, feuds broke out. It is not surprising that in these conditions there was a man who declared himself Nero, who was allegedly only wounded during the coup and managed to escape to the east.
Christians were horrified by these rumors. Still: one of the most terrible enemies has risen from the dead. They attributed the resurrection of Nero to Satan himself and in horror awaited the end of the world. The Christian faith had not yet matured at that time. In Roman cities, there were closed communities leading a semi-legal existence.
If at the moment of the appearance of the false Nero their members renounced their faith, this would mean the collapse of Christianity. Therefore, the pastors took measures to strengthen the will of their charges.
It was during this difficult time that various "revelations" appeared. All of them were devoted to one theme: the end of the world and the day of judgment will soon come, after which all enemies of Christians will be destroyed, and Christians themselves will gain eternal life.
All the authors of the "revelations" (later the Church canonized only one thing - the "Apocalypse" that has come down to us) used similar symbols: seven kings, forty-two months of the power of the beast, the number of antichrist.
And all of them, including John the Theologian, spoke of the end of the world as something inevitable and very close in time. However, the end of the world did not follow, and the name of Nero was eventually forgotten.
It would seem that the Church should have consigned the "Apocalypse" to oblivion - as an unfulfilled prophecy. But the Christian shepherds were wise people. Therefore, they left the doctrine of the end of the world and the coming Doomsday.
It turned out to be a very effective argument that creates a powerful motivation: our cause is right, someday all enemies will be destroyed, and the Kingdom of Christ will come on Earth.
Over time, the generally accepted interpretation of the number 666 was forgotten, and they began to “try on” it on the next tyrants who could be found in every era. For example, at the time of Peter I, the Old Believers considered him the Antichrist. First, it was the "eighth king" - as predicted in "Revelation."
Secondly, his reforms affected the interests of the Orthodox Church. Still: he took away the land from the monks, abolished the post in the army, and he introduced completely alien customs at court - assemblies, smoking tobacco, unusual clothes …
The next "Antichrist", according to the calculations of the same monks, was Napoleon. Through many permutations and combinations, it was possible to fit his name under the famous "666".
Later, Hitler, Stalin, Bill Gates were called “the beast” … And according to one version, the “beast” was not a man, but a whole state - the now disintegrated USSR. The argument was very simple: cut off the last letter "P" - it simply means a country - and read the name as "CCC country".
And now we take the old Slavonic edition of "Revelation" and see that the number of the beast often looks like SSS. The fact is that this is how the eighth letter of the alphabet was written - "zelo", which meant the number six.
Perhaps this is the strangest of the versions about the "number of the beast" - after all, "Revelation" was written not only and not so much for Russia, and this coincidence in other languages is not confirmed.
But back to the number 666 itself. From the point of view of the numerical symbolism of the Pythagoreans, this is the so-called triangular number. It expresses the sum of consecutive digits from 1 to 36.
The sixes that make it up are no less unusual. The number six is the first of the so-called perfect numbers, the sum of the divisors of which (including one and excluding the number itself) is equal to the number itself: 6 = 1 + 2 + 3.
And here is another interesting fact from the world of numbers: 666 is the sum of the squares of the first seven primes. If we consider the number of an animal in the framework of the theory of stability of binary systems, as did the candidate of technical sciences Andrei Osipov, then we get a rather interesting picture.
The fact is that binary systems are stable in the range from one third to two thirds (in decimal form - from 33.3% to 66.6%). So if the number of people seduced by the beast reaches 66.6%, humanity as a system will begin to collapse …
According to biblical symbolism, six is a human number. First of all, it was on the sixth day that man was created. But this is not the main thing: if the seven is closely connected with God and the upper world, then the six symbolizes human perfection (which is an order of magnitude lower than the divine), wealth and power.
In the East, there are whole queues for documents with a six - it is considered a real talisman that brings happiness to the owner. But what have not been discovered in the number 666 (or in connection with its use) by researchers from different parts of the world!
They tried to declare the world wide web - the Internet (on the grounds that www is 666 when translated into Hebrew and the corresponding calculation) and dollar bills (they have a width of 66.6 mm)!
And in 1997, the Greek computer scientist Foma Psaras reported that barcodes use three secret double strokes, which are simply separators for the computer, but by chance denote the number 6.
Thomas, apparently, was a fan of the "Apocalypse", and concluded: the barcode on goods and documents is nothing more than the seal of Satan. As proof, he cited words from the same prophecy: those who do not have the seal of Satan can neither buy nor sell. Of course, the journalists immediately picked up another sensation.
The number 666 has a strange effect on people. Christians do their best to avoid it, which gives rise to many curiosities. In some cities of the world, skyscrapers lack the 66th floor, that is, after the 65th, the 67th immediately follows. And on the map of the USA you will not find roads 666 - apparently, the Americans decided not to risk it.
Moscow Orthodox Christians in the ornament on the new Russian passport saw three sixes. They came to receive new documents only after consulting a priest. Before the elections to the Russian parliament in 2003, the Tambov region decided not to make polling station No. 666 in connection with the numerous appeals of believing voters.
In 2002, the trial that took place in the town of Priozersk, Leningrad Region, became a sensation and was later called "the trial against the devil." The city court officially recognized that the barcode of each taxpayer identification number (TIN) contains three sixes.
Despite the fact that the number of interpretations 666 has exceeded a hundred, new hypotheses are constantly being put forward. Increasingly, they no longer concern specific historical figures, but abstractions. For example, Oleg Molenko, the rector of the Church of St. John the Divine in Toronto, believes:
“The number 666 itself does not mean anything except the actual number. But, I think, the name of the beast is not accidentally expressed by three sixes. God created the universe for six days, and on the seventh day rested from His works.
Hence, people have a seven-day week. If you take away the day of rest, there remains work, work, work. In this sense, the number six means deprivation of peace. And in triple form - deprivation of eternal peace."
The story of the "number of the beast" and the superstitions associated with it is a classic example of the influence of myths on human consciousness. The number 666 is indeed a human number. Its dark symbolism was invented by people. But, as often happens, the symbol got out of the control of its creators.
And now thousands of people, consciously or unconsciously, shy away from the number, which is considered devilish. And hundreds are trying to figure out the name of the beast and calculate the date of the end of the world.